Shoutout to the person who pointed out my color profiles

I was showing a piece in a group chat and someone asked why my bright reds looked so muddy on their screen. Turns out, for like two years, I'd been saving everything for web in the wrong color profile (Adobe RGB instead of sRGB). I checked my old posts and sure enough, all 80+ pieces I've shared online looked washed out to most people. I redid the export on my latest piece and the difference is huge. Has anyone else had a 'duh' moment with a basic tech setting that messed up your art?

3 comments

3 Comments

ninas703mo ago

Man, that hits close to home. I once printed a whole batch of stickers and they came out super dark and murky because my monitor brightness was cranked way up. I had been working like that for months, completely blind to how everything actually looked. It's crazy how one wrong setting can just quietly ruin all your work. I still double-check my monitor calibration every few weeks now, totally paranoid about it.

noahchen3mo ago

Monitor betrayal is real.

taylor.jessica1d ago

Ninas70 has a good point about checking calibration, but the real issue with the stickers was probably more than just monitor brightness. Most photo editing software has a gamma setting that can mess with how prints look way worse than just a bright screen. And there's also the color profile mismatch thing where your monitor shows one set of colors but the printer expects another. So even if you get your brightness perfect, if your color profile is off everything still comes out looking off. It's good to check both settings before starting a big print job.